


He's just the last of a dying breed.

by Dark_at_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, completely ignoring Thor 2 because i am yet to see it, tw for alleged suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 19:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1480801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_at_Noon/pseuds/Dark_at_Noon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mortals die, like wilting roses on a vine, but Thor will live an age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He's just the last of a dying breed.

**Author's Note:**

> so im going away on my first ever overseas trip in two hours and i was panicking in the shower so i decided to write and it obviously went horribly wrong. not v happy with the ending but it's okay so.   
> comments are very much appreciated, and i can be found at thorinsulkenshield.tumblr.com, or if you actually want to reach me my kik username is swagwisegamgee.   
> enjoy.

Thor has never liked hospitals. He dislikes the acrid smells of death and shame, and he dislikes how people are reduced to nothing but insignificance. Today is no exception. 

Thor sits awkwardly in a too-small chair, watching the rise and fall of the chest of the old man in front of him, a once great warrior reduced to dust and ash. They had told him, when he had agreed to the Avengers Initiative, that he would age so much slower than his mortal comrades. He'd never thought it would be like this. 

Steve Rogers stirs slightly on the bed, liver spotted hands balling into weak fists as he struggles to fight the one foe he will never beat. His mind is gone, corrupted by the only mortal illnesses that had ever been able to reach him, dementia and age. They are the only two left, but Thor is the only one who remembers.

* * *

They'd lost Clint Barton first, in a horrible accident. Thor had laughed when he'd heard, because the greatest Midgardan archer surely could not have been felled by something so insignificant? Could such a great man truly have fallen from a roof? It had been months before eventually, the coroner decided it had been a suicide. Barton must have been depressed, he said, Loki's possession of his mind and the knowledge of his ageing had made him feel so small and useless that he'd seen no point in continuing his life. Thor hadn't laughed when they'd reviewed the footage of that day and saw that Loki had been on that roof too, whispering honey into Barton's ears, telling him things that nobody else would ever know. Loki had laughed when Thor accused him of murder, and he'd laughed and laughed and laughed, until Thor felt like his ears were bleeding and his heart was breaking. He didn't return to Asgard after that.

* * * 

Natasha had died to them six years after Clint. She'd vanished in the middle of the night, after the news reports and S.H.I.E.L.D started telling them that their new foe was called the Winter Soldier. Thor had seen her twice since, once at a cafe in Paris on his honeymoon with his lady Jane, and once at his Jane's funeral. She'd patted his arm and told him that despite how rare it was, women did die in childbirth still. Jane was unlucky, the baby was too big, and that she, Natasha was sorry for him. He knows she watches him still. 

* * *

In 2020, they were in Lativia, fighting against Doom and some of his robots, when they'd discovered that there was such a thing that could kill the Hulk. The look on Banner's face, emerging as the missile hit him is etched onto Thor's mind forever. 

Bruce Banner was the only one of them who made it to Vahalla. 

* * *  
Tony Stark had slipped away in the night too, cancer ravaging his body and his mind. He'd been seventy six, and he'd died surrounded by family, his two children and six grandchildren, Thor and Steve. He'd looked up at both of them, the last two of a dying breed, and huffed out a laugh. Blood seeped from his mouth. "Well, boys," Stark had said, "It was nice knowing you. I'll look out for Jane and Thordis, Fabio. I'll tell them that you've moped for the last twenty years. Steve, keep defending the rights of the every day American." and then Stark had reached up to swab the blood from his mouth, and smiled. "I never thought I'd make seventy six," He said. And then Thor turned his head to see Hel in the corner of the room, and she'd smiled her broken glass grin and Stark had died. 

* * *

But here Thor is now, leaning over the almost lifeless body of a man who was almost two hundred years old. A man who had seen the rise and fall of empires, who had been the greatest hero of all time. Steve turns to look at him, and smiles the smile of a senile man. "My friend," begins Thor, "We will meet again, in the halls of the gods." Then he closes his eyes, and Hel takes him under her breast for her own. Thor and Steve do not meet again in the halls of any gods, and that was Thor's one true lie. 

In the distance, Natasha watches on. 


End file.
